Pakistan

The government of Pakistan is a keen pursuer of bilateral trade and investment agreements. It has a full FTA with Sri Lanka (2005), a PTA with Iran (2004) and Mauritius (2007), Early Harvest Schemes with China (2005) and Malaysia (2007), and is part of both ECOTA and SAFTA. It is in various stages of FTA talks, or preparations for talks, with Brunei, Indonesia, Jordan, Thailand, Malaysia, Morocco, Singapore, the Gulf Cooperation Council, Canada, Switzerland, Indonesia, Nepal, China, Turkey and Russia (among others). In July 2006, it signed a Framework Agreement on Trade with Mercosur.

Negotiations on a US-Pakistan bilateral investment treaty, as a step towards a US-Pakistan FTA, have been quite controversial and are unconcluded. After talks restarted in mid-2010, a draft US-Pakistan BIT was sent for approval to Pakistan’s Cabinet in April 2012. The Pakistani government has already signed almost 50 BITs with other countries. In 2011 Germany ratified a BIT with Pakistan.

On a wider scale, there is talk of possible Pakistani FTAs with Afghanistan, Algeria, the EU, Japan, Laos, Mexico, New Zealand, South Africa and Tunisia.

Japan will make a fresh attempt to expand the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact to include more Asian economies, such as Thailand, Taiwan, Indonesia and the Philippines, after the new coronavirus exposed the risks of supply chains overly dependent on China.

As none of the Free Trade Agreement has boosted exports from the country so far, the FEBR has recommended the government to review its trade and export policies with a keen focus on value-addition for a sustainable economic trajectory.

The ice between Pakistan and Turkey on Free Trade Agreement has thawed and to this effect the commerce ministry will highlight the potential sectors on FTA in March and begin negotiating on the FTA in Ankara in April.

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